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Crilly: Trump's tax returns or his taped vulgar comments about women are not changing many voters' opinions

Voter in Pennsylvania: "I had already made up my mind ... the video just reinforced everything"

Rob Crilly is a British journalist living in New York. He was the Telegraph's Afghanistan and Pakistan correspondent and was previously the East Africa correspondent for the Times. The opinions in this article are those of the author.

(CNN)Have we been looking for the wrong moment in this presidential election campaign? Are we so busy looking for the sensational gotcha trap of Donald Trump's taxes or his vulgar comments about women that we have missed the real story unfolding in front of us?

"I had already made up my mind," Camillo said as families painted unglazed white pottery in her store. "The video just reinforced everything."

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Camillo, who has a 6-year-old son, had been an undecided voter at the start of the election campaign. Trump's words about rebuilding the economy and America's place in the world had resonated with her and many others in a state that, despite having voted Democrat in every election since 1992, was until recently considered a key battleground.

But Camillo said she was won over by Hillary Clinton because she appeared more presidential throughout the campaign and managed to show her personable side, as she did during Sunday's debate when she listened to voters as they asked questions.

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This was a common refrain heard along the road through the Poconos. There was no one moment, no single revelation or scandal that changed voters' minds. Just a growing sense that one candidate, rather than the other, was most fit for the office of president.

At the end of last month, Trump was running almost even with Clinton in the state. But a disastrous couple of weeks for the reality TV star -- a bad first debate, a 3 a.m. tweetstorm, then that video -- have seen his rival open up a double-digit lead.

It is prime territory for a radical message of economic renewal, and more than 9,000 supporters -- many of them women -- crammed into a sports arena to hear it.

Among them was Andrea Bell, a chemical engineer. She said she couldn't understand how anyone offended by Trump's words could hold down a job -- such was the everyday sexism that women experience in the workplace.